Hors la lois (Outside the Law)

Outside the Law is the second movie of Rachid Bouchareb after “The days of glory”, it is like a sequel but not, it focuses on the Algerian struggle to have the independence from France after the WWII, and especially the struggle by the Algerians living in France.

The film making is better then the last one - The days of glory - , with a beautiful music and cinematography, a great performance of the actors which are the same from The days of glory, and amazingly they played the same characters in the two movies: Saïd, Messaoud, Abdelkader. In “The days of glory” they were just friends of the battlefield, in “Outside the Law” they were brothers. In my opinion the use of the same characters by Rachid Bouchareb was very intelligent, it marks the fact that in every one of the Algerian people during the struggle there was Saïd, Messaoud or Abdelkader, those characters are a kind of a factorial of many stories in the struggle of the Algerian people.

Despite the little poor story that did not reflect precisely all the aspects of the struggle by the Algerians living in France, the movie was nominated for an OSCAR in the category of Foreign Language Film (83rd academy awards).

It is a nice movie; it shows a historical reality unknown by many persons.

The music of revolution

Singer Yusuf Islam talks about his latest song, which was inspired by the popular uprisings in the Arab world.

The music of revolution - Riz Khan - Al Jazeera English

The King of King's speech

The King of King's speech

Muammar Gaddafi is dangerously in denial. Alas, he's been that way for a long time.

Gaddafi has ruled Libya for the past 42 years with iron fist, but insists he has no official role and therefore couldn't resign. Otherwise, he would have done that long ago!

He thinks of himself as Zaim - a guru leader - or the king of kings of Africa as referred to himself repeatedly the last couple of years.

Indigènes (Days of Glory)

The days of glory illustrate a part of the history during the World War 2, when the French resistance commanded by general de Gaulle gathered a new army to fight with the allies, this new army was called ‘les indigènes’, they were men recruited from the countries occupied by the French empire.

The movie shows how they participate in the liberation of the French Republic from the Nazis, and how during the war they suffered from injustice inside the army, they were “under feeded, not well dressed and not well trained” comparing to the French soldiers, in spite of they struggled believing the day of liberty is close.

The idea to tell the story of those called ‘les indigènes’ was great, but not well exposed, the scenario and the emotions were poor, the whole movie was about the North African soldiers (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), especially the Algerian ones, certainly because of the background of the director who is originally from Algeria.

The good thing about the movie was the music which was very interesting and very expressive, and the performance of the actors, great combination between the French language and the Arabic language.

It is a nice movie after all, because it shows a historical reality unknown by many persons.

The Hurt Locker

The hurt locker drag you deep in what a soldier can feel or became in a dirty war, you can feel during the movie what the soldiers feel, you feel that you are smothered by the scenes you’ve watched and experienced, you feel inhuman by the pain you’ve bring and done, you feel lost between your duty and your morals.

In this kind of war we notice that almost all of the field soldiers are very young, which is an intentional choice of the war's makers, because the young ones are mentally very vulnerable, so very handy, then it is easy to switch the minds of the soldiers from the real world to a video game world and make them do horrible things to themselves and to the others.

In the end, if you don’t die in this real “video game”, you will belong to two categories, those who get used to this game and can not quit it, and those who get abused by this game, in the end the both categories will be threw in the real world with a hidden or obvious mental disorder.

To avoid a catastrophe, we need new leaders, leaders who can redefine the true meaning of Truth, Justice, and Peace.